Advances in cell-replacement therapy for Type I diabetes mellitus and a shortage of transplantable islets of Langerhans have focused interest on developing sources of insulin-producing cells, or β cells, appropriate for engraftment. One approach is the generation of functional β cells from pluripotent stem cells, such as, embryonic stem cells.
In vertebrate embryonic development, a pluripotent cell gives rise to a group of cells comprising three germ layers (ectoderm, mesoderm, and endoderm) in a process known as gastrulation. Tissues such as, thyroid, thymus, pancreas, gut, and liver, will develop from the endoderm, via an intermediate stage. The intermediate stage in this process is the formation of definitive endoderm.
By the end of gastrulation, the endoderm is partitioned into anterior-posterior domains that can be recognized by the expression of a panel of factors that uniquely mark anterior, mid, and posterior regions of the endoderm. For example, HHEX, and SOX2 identify the anterior region while CDX1, 2, and 4 identify the posterior region of the endoderm.
Migration of endoderm tissue brings the endoderm into close proximity with different mesodermal tissues that help in regionalization of the gut tube. This is accomplished by a plethora of secreted factors, such as FGFs, Wnts, TGF-βs, retinoic acid (“RA”), and BMP ligands and their antagonists. For example, FGF4 and BMP are reported to promote CDX2 expression in the presumptive hindgut endoderm and repress expression of the anterior genes HHEX and SOX2 (2000 Development, 127:1563-1567). WNT signaling has also been shown to work in parallel to FGF signaling to promote hindgut development and inhibit foregut fate (2007 Development, 134:2207-2217). Lastly, secreted retinoic acid by mesenchyme regulates the foregut-hindgut boundary (2002 Curr Biol, 12:1215-1220).
The level of expression of specific transcription factors may be used to designate the identity of a tissue. During transformation of the definitive endoderm into a primitive gut tube, the gut tube becomes regionalized into broad domains that can be observed at the molecular level by restricted gene expression patterns. For example, the regionalized pancreas domain in the gut tube shows a very high expression of PDX1 and very low expression of CDX2 and SOX2. PDX1, NKX6.1, PTF1A, and NKX2.2 are highly expressed in pancreatic tissue; and expression of CDX2 is high in intestine tissue.
Formation of the pancreas arises from the differentiation of definitive endoderm into pancreatic endoderm. Dorsal and ventral pancreatic domains arise from the foregut epithelium. Foregut also gives rise to the esophagus, trachea, lungs, thyroid, stomach, liver, pancreas, and bile duct system.
Cells of the pancreatic endoderm express the pancreatic-duodenal homeobox gene PDX1. In the absence of PDX1, the pancreas fails to develop beyond the formation of ventral and dorsal buds. Thus, PDX1 expression marks a critical step in pancreatic organogenesis. The mature pancreas contains both, exocrine tissue and endocrine tissue arising from the differentiation of pancreatic endoderm.
D'Amour et al. describes the production of enriched cultures of human embryonic stem cell-derived definitive endoderm in the presence of a high concentration of activin and low serum (Nature Biotechnol 2005, 23:1534-1541; U.S. Pat. No. 7,704,738). Transplanting these cells under the kidney capsule of mice reportedly resulted in differentiation into more mature cells with characteristics of endodermal tissue (U.S. Pat. No. 7,704,738). Human embryonic stem cell derived definitive endoderm cells can be further differentiated into PDX1 positive cells after addition of FGF10 and retinoic acid (U.S. Patent App. Pub. No. 2005/0266554A1). Subsequent transplantation of these pancreatic precursor cells in the fat pad of immune deficient mice resulted in the formation of functional pancreatic endocrine cells following a 3-4 month maturation phase (U.S. Pat. Nos. 7,993,920 and 7,534,608).
Fisk et al. report a system for producing pancreatic islet cells from human embryonic stem cells (U.S. Pat. No. 7,033,831). Small molecule inhibitors have also been used for induction of pancreatic endocrine precursor cells. For example, small molecule inhibitors of TGF-β receptor and BMP receptors (Development 2011, 138:861-871; Diabetes 2011, 60:239-247) have been used to significantly enhance the number of pancreatic endocrine cells. In addition, small molecule activators have also been used to generate definitive endoderm cells or pancreatic precursor cells (Curr Opin Cell Biol 2009, 21:727-732; Nature Chem Biol 2009, 5:258-265).
Great strides have been made in improving protocols for culturing progenitor cells such as pluripotent stem cells. PCT Publication No. WO2007/026353 (Amit et al.) discloses maintaining human embryonic stem cells in an undifferentiated state in a two-dimensional culture system. Ludwig et al., 2006 (Nature Biotechnology, 24: 185-7) discloses a TeSR1 defined medium for culturing human embryonic stem cells on a matrix. U.S. Patent App. Pub. No. 2007/0155013 (Akaike et al.) discloses a method of growing pluripotent stem cells in suspension using a carrier that adheres to the pluripotent stem cells, and U.S. Patent App. Pub. No. 2009/0029462 (Beardsley et al.) discloses methods of expanding pluripotent stem cells in suspension using microcarriers or cell encapsulation. PCT Publication No. WO 2008/015682 (Amit et al.) discloses a method of expanding and maintaining human embryonic stem cells in a suspension culture under culturing conditions devoid of substrate adherence.
U.S. Patent App. Pub. No. 2008/0159994 (Mantalaris et al.) discloses a method of culturing human embryonic stem cells encapsulated within alginate beads in a three-dimensional culture system.
Despite these advances, a need still remains for a method to successfully culture pluripotent stem cells in a three-dimensional culture system that may differentiate to functional endocrine cells.